Just discovered this thread a couple weeks ago. After a lot of reading (wow, so much good stuff!) I finally decided to take the leap and post.
Prompt: Night of the Living Prompt (Worst Day Ever), about 1200 words
Featuring my IA Kinka and Vector
Some mild Act 3 spoilers.

Spoiler

The agent sat on the edge of the bed, knees drawn close to her chest. A stubborn chill permeated her bones, never mind that the thermoregulator indicated that she should be comfortable. Worry about tomorrow was unshakeable.

KInka had faced difficult missions before, but this was different. Keeper’s holocall had shaken her to the core; it had occurred to her that she might someday be captured and interrogated, but it never crossed her mind that she’d be offering herself up for it. Now on the eve of uncertainty, it was all she could think about.

Kinka sent the rest of the crew away for the evening and hoped that Corellia’s spaceport cantina would keep them entertained for the night. Meanwhile, she sought refuge within, hoping to steel herself for what would come. The kinds of things her captors would do weren’t a mystery; interrogation techniques are well-known to Intelligence officers. She thought back on the tests required to even become an agent, one of which was enduring a random sampling of torture techniques. You break, you fail, as it is with most things in the Empire. But her thoughts were interrupted by the familiar voice outside the door to her quarters.

“Agent?”

Vector. He hadn’t gone with the rest after all. He was the only member of the crew privy to what would happen in the morning. Kinka had sent him out with the others, too, but he hadn’t listened. Smart man.

“Come in.”

“We hope we’re not intruding. It’s just...we...I thought you should have someone with you tonight.” He struggled with the words slightly, working to wrestle control of his mind in order to give her the privacy she deserved.

“You’re not interrupting,” she said stoically. It took Kinka a great deal of strength to drag herself out of her self-pity, but for him she could manage. “You’re always welcome with me.”

“You’re frightened for tomorrow,” he said, joining her at the end of the bed. “The interrogation.”

There was no need to ask it.

“I am frightened about a great many things, Vector. Surprisingly, torture is the least of those.”

“Pain doesn’t bother you?”

“Oh, it does. Very much. But I don’t fear it the way most people do. They train that out of you when you join Intelligence. After a while, you’re desensitized to it.”

“Did they hurt you there?” he asked. They had never talked about these things before. There had never been time to really delve into each others’ pasts. They always meant to, but stolen moments were the best they had been able to manage. It seemed like one disaster fed into the next, almost from the moment they met on Alderaan. That seemed like so long ago now.

She nodded wearily. “But not as much as some of the others I trained with.”

“You have lived a difficult life. We...I cannot imagine.”

Kinka sat quietly for a while, mulling over his words. A difficult life, yes, but perhaps not undeserved. Vector was a good, gentle soul, and she was stained with blood from head to foot. She had tried so hard to put the bad behind her, to convince herself that she had changed — and she had — but it was impossible to forget the ghosts in her not-so-distant past.

“You know, there have been so many times that I’ve considered becoming a Joiner so that we could share the kind of connection you have with the hive. To truly be one. But then I remember what you’ve said about remembering everything that ever happened to those like you, everything said, everything done...”

He continued to listen patiently, wondering, she was certain, where her rambling was headed.

“And I remember things that I’ve done in the past, horrible things. When I started my career I was dropped onto Hutta, a festering pile of dung if there ever was one. Corrupt to the core, violent, insane. I adopted a habit of being cruel for the sake of being cruel, and I had the seal of the empire behind me. I thought that that was how I was supposed to be. So long as the empire wasn’t in jeopardy, I could be bought, and killing someone was always an easier option to take than negotiation. But slowly I began to realize that there was another way. That cruelty wasn’t a tool that I should be using. Kaliyo once remarked that even she was startled by the number of bodies piling up behind us, which is the biggest wakeup call a person can get. By the time I met you, I had committed to changing. I’d never met someone so kind and at peace as you. I wanted to be worthy of you.”

She found herself unable to meet his gaze. “I’m not sure I ever will.”

He looked at his agent soulfully and gently turned her to face him. It was then that she finally noticed that he had suppressed the pheremonic bond with the hive, a rare treat that wasn’t lost on her.

His steely eyes glistened. “You are perfect to me, agent, past and all. We all make mistakes.”

“Sometimes I feel like these things that have happened — the brainwashing, the torture — that they’re punishment for the things I’ve done,” Kinka confessed, her voice betraying a slight tremor that unnerved her. She wasn’t used to being vulnerable, even with Vector. Vulnerability will get you killed, she often told her herself.

“The universe doesn’t work that way,” he countered gently. “I truly believe that. And you wouldn’t be submitting yourself to capture and interrogation if you weren’t a good person. Bad people do not care whether the galaxy burns.”

A sad smile played at her lips as she recalled a memory. “I keep thinking about that planet you told me of once, the one with a sky the color of ocean...sometimes I think we should just slip away, fall off the radar.”

“If that’s what you want.”

Kinka sighed and shook her head.

“You’ll be with me tomorrow,” she said quietly. It was the one thing that offered some measure of comfort, but with it came a whole other set of worries. After all, Vector would be in just as much danger as she would. But if it worried him at all, he didn’t show it in ways that she could detect.

“Of course, agent. I’ll be with you always. We will make it through this alright.”

He turned as if to give his worried agent the privacy she had earlier insisted she wanted, but her hands firmly took his.

“I do fear tomorrow,” she said, her voice rushed and desperate. “You were right, Vector. But I’m not afraid of the pain or of letting something slip that I shouldn’t — I know quite well how to hold my tongue. What I am afraid of is giving up. I’m afraid that the pain will overwhelm me to the point where I’ll decide that death would be a release. That then no one would be able to hurt me or manipulate me anymore. I’m afraid I’ll stop fighting.”

He gazed at her face, unable to read her aura but acutely aware of her fear. Her eyes glistened with panic and sadness.

“You need something to fight for.”

He pulled her in close and pressed his soft lips against hers, the chill in Kinka’s bones abating for the time being.

“Stay with me tonight,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”